Emotional Causes of Back Pain: What Your Back May Be Carrying

You bent down to pick up a sock, and your back said no. Or it’s been there for months, that dull ache low down that gets worse by evening and worse again in the weeks when life is heavy.

You’ve had it checked. Maybe you’re doing the exercises. And still a small voice asks: is this only my back? Or am I carrying something?

We won’t tell you your pain is “all emotional.” It isn’t, and anyone who says so hasn’t lived in your body. But we also won’t pretend that what you feel lives nowhere in your body. Feelings are physical. They have to sit somewhere.

Lower back pain emotional meaning: what you’ll read, and what we think

If you search for the emotional meaning of back pain, you’ll find neat maps that give each part of the back its own emotion.

We don’t use them. Not because the back has nothing to say, but because a map turns a feeling into a puzzle, and puzzles live in the head.

So here’s the question we’d ask instead. Not “what does my lower back mean?” but “what is in my body right now, and can I feel it?”

Back pain and emotions: why they travel together

Think about how you stand on a hard day. Shoulders up. Stomach held. Jaw tight. Ready for the next thing. Now think about how many hard days you’ve had in a row.

Feelings that don’t get felt don’t disappear. In our book we describe them waiting “in your chest, in your throat, in your belly, in the jaw you clench when you sleep.” In our sessions, when we guide people to wherever it presses now, the places we name are the chest, the throat, the belly, the solar plexus, the jaw, the shoulder blade, and the lower back.

That doesn’t mean a feeling caused your pain. It means a body that has been bracing for years may have a lot of bracing in the back, and a lot of feeling held in that bracing.

If the ache is higher up, around the neck and shoulders, see our piece on the emotional meaning of shoulder pain.

Spiritual meaning of back pain: what are you carrying?

Maybe you’ve caught yourself saying “I feel like I’m carrying the whole family on my back.” That sentence is worth listening to. Not as a diagnosis. As a clue to what you’ve been holding.

What if this pain is also carrying something you haven’t let yourself feel? Tiredness that rest doesn’t reach. Anger at always being the one who copes. Fear of what happens if you put it all down.

You don’t have to answer that with your mind. Ask it, and feel what your body does.

Why lying still can be the hardest part

The practice below asks you to be still. For you that might be the hardest part, and not only because of the back.

Rytis knows this. He has said he used to be terribly afraid to feel, wore masks, ate a lot, and couldn’t stay still in one place even for a few minutes. Stillness was exactly where the feelings were waiting.

So be kind about it. If lying on the floor hurts your back, do it on the bed, or sitting up. As we say in the book, “you can do this on a chair, in a car that is parked, on a park bench.” And if staying still makes the pain sharper, move. You are always in charge.

Practice5 min

A five-minute Feeling Session

1. Lie down. Floor or bed. Twenty minutes, or five.
2. Cover your eyes. Let the outside go dark.
3. Arms by your sides, palms down. Nothing to grab.
4. Close your mouth. Leave the breath alone.
5. Don’t move. Not even a little.
6. Find the heaviest place in your body right now.
7. Put all of your attention there, and keep it there.
8. Don’t follow the thoughts. When you notice one, come back to the body.
9. Don’t run. Stay one more minute than you want to.
10. Stop whenever you need to. No decisions until the wave has passed.

The heaviest place might be your back. It might not. Sometimes the back is loud, and under it, quieter, there’s a tight chest or a stone in the stomach. Go where it’s heaviest, even if that surprises you.

What you might notice: heat or tingling, the ache shifting place, a wave of tiredness, or nothing yet. “Every body is different, and every session is different.”

All you felt this time may have been the same old ache, and that counts too. The book closes with the questions people ask us, and the very first one is yours: “What if I don’t feel anything?”

Living with the ache between appointments

• Watch when the pain is worse. Which days, which conversations, which weeks? Just notice. No conclusions yet.
• Before bed, five minutes, on the bed if the floor is too much. Palms down. Eyes covered.
• When you catch yourself bracing, shoulders up, belly held, stop for ten seconds and feel what you’re bracing against.
• If the pain has been with you a long time, our piece on chronic pain and emotions goes further.

The body section has more pieces like this one, and you can read about the method behind them on the Feeling Session page.

Somewhere on the bedroom floor there may still be a sock you never picked up. Next time you bend for it, go slowly, and notice what the rest of you is bracing against before your back has to say it for you.